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Butterflies and Condescention


Sometimes, and they aren't all the time, when we crash in burn. I guess that this is true to all of us, living in a planet that is filled with such events chIaotic as what the human mind can comprehend. What we experience everyday in our lives, from the buzzing bees to the cars that stream pass the highways, is filled with chaos. Danger that hides in plain site.

Don't you see it? I was able to, ever since I was a young boy. Seated behind the car my mom would make turns around corners, often encountering close calls which cannot be explained except by coincidences or Divine protection. We would fly pass accidents every now and then that a split second difference would or might mean the worst thing that could happen, and something that will soon be forgotten because of its insignificance.

I would often reflect that if i hadn't forgotten to bring something, then my mom wouldn't have to honk the car horn willing me come faster. I would have saved at least a few seconds to come out of the gate. Reach the corner and make the turn faster. We would go ahead of the car that would've been ahead of us. A few seconds ahead of the traffic lights; a few seconds more that could have put us in the exact time and place where something horrible could have happened.

What do you call those incidences, when we find that by some dumb luck, masked by insignificance that saves our lives everday? Is it just coincidence, or Divine protection? Ever since I was little, this plagued me; that perhaps the smallest moments could make the biggest difference in the end. A butterfly effect that spans through from the beginning of time to the next second that follows this one.

Focusing on that relieves me of the depression I get when I do happen to crash and burn. The complexity of the whole universe makes me see my own hurts as part of the cycle of things; be it God's plan or not, but since it was meant to happen; simply because that it did occur and because we do not have the ability to undo things, even if in our minds we see them as mistakes.

When Mt. Pinatubo errupted my family was in Manila. I was but a very small boy and the accounts of this story was retold by my mother. I was too young to remember. We were there when the smoke descended down on Luzon, we were miles away from ground zero. My mom remembers it being terrible; people were getting sick because of the ashes that hovered over city. Things got so bad that my mom had to pull us out from Manila because my brother was having frequent asthma attacks and it wasn't safe for him to stay. When we could no longer live in Manila, my mom decided to transfer to Cagayan de Oro City where her grandparents are. That is the start of the whole different story, but it does leave many questions for me. What if my brother wasn't born with asthma problems? Or what if Pinatubo hadn't errupted like it did? Where would we be?

This is when we realize how our lives are run by either dumb luck or Divine intervention. Where would we be if Rizal hadn't finished his novel, because he hadn't forgotten to bring his pen one day, which led him to the corner of a street faster than he should've, where a fast carriage passed by just when he blindly crossed the road? A split second; all the difference in the world.

In these moments I often turn to condesention for comfort. Although I do realize how farfetched my ideas are to some, the fact remains true to all of us despite our beliefs. That life is happens without our permission, and all we have to do is to live it. Do what you have to do, there is no other way of living your life than to live it the way you are living it now. There is no other feeling for me today than this, and if I want that changed, then I have to look to the next second after this one and live.


- Posted using BlogPress from an iPhone. Well, sort of.

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